04/10/24
Good morning! It’s Wednesday, April 10th
National Hug Your Dog Day
Aw!
And now, the news.
Abortion in America
-via Washington Post, Constitution Annotated, CNN, Vox, NBC News, and Ballotpedia
Surprise! It’s a surprise special episode because this show is free and so today I’m covering one topic, and one topic only:
Abortion in America.
Because on Tuesday, the Arizona State Supreme Court issued a near total ban on abortion, invoking an 1864 law that forbids it unless it’s needed to save the mother’s life (it’s an 1864 law, of course it’s going to be gendered). It also punishes providers.
Arizona is now the 16th state to essentially outlaw abortion in the post-Roe era.
The law will not be enforced for 14 days, which means Planned Parenthood Arizona could use this time to raise questions on constitutionality.
Here are some ways in which its constitutionality should be questioned:
The 1st Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The 9th Amendment: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
The 14th Amendment: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
This law does not allow exemptions for rape or incest. Truly unimaginable.
And yet, also very imaginable – the state joins Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Texas in the list of places that do not have exemptions for rape or incest.
Of course they say there are exemptions to save the life of the pregnant person but how close to death does someone have to be before doctors decide they will perform the abortion? As a reminder, Texas’ Kate Cox had to leave Texas to get an abortion because the state claimed to have exemptions to save the life of the pregnant person, but when it came down to it, Texas’ AG (and bad guy that’s so bad that it’s honestly a little too on the nose for how often he’s bad, like we get it – you’re not a good human being!) Ken Paxton sent a letter to hospitals where Cox’s doctor practices and threatened them with civil and criminal charges if she performed the abortion that the law purports to allow.
So, medically-speaking, this does the bare-minimum as far as protecting the life of the pregnant person.
Also, I saw this every time but when they talk about the life of the pregnant person – they are only talking medically. They don’t care about their life. Their actual life. The way that forcing someone to be pregnant when they don’t want to, or desperately want to but for a multitude of reasons shouldn’t be forced to carry to term, will affect their life.
Do these feckless, heartless, binkuses writing these laws think pregnancy is like… easy?
Don’t answer that – we know they’re not thinking about the people who are actually being forced by the state to carry a child.
Computer, play Taylor Swift’s Mad Woman (that’s real. I did listen to it.) Because I am a mad woman. And that song segues into my next point:
Because yes, I breath flames each time I talk about this. And yes, when you say I seem angry, I get more angry. But perhaps the more apt line is this:
“You'll poke that bear 'til her claws come out.”
I want to clarify something. I called this an 1864 law. It’s actually an 1864 territorial law. That’s because this law was created 48 years before Arizona was a state.
Is that technically neither here nor there? Absolutely. Is it still completely bonkers that a 160-year-old law that was created before a state was a state will now shutter clinics and put lives at risk? Yes!
This law was also created before 104 years before women had the right to vote!
But we have the right to vote now.
So to quote one last Taylor Swift song… let the games begin.
Eleven years ago, Wendy Davis, then a state senator from Texas, stood for 11 hours--
“Oh, here comes Kim, talking about Wendy Davis again.”
Yeah! I’m passionate about the things I’m passionate about. Would you rather I talk about Ted Lasso? No, that seems like the dumbest thing to bring up right now. Feels like it would really take the wind out of my sails because I’m very clearly winding up to a point here. I can’t believe you brought it up!
What do I do about a county that does not care about me? That creates laws like this that takes away the right for choice. Just the choice to decide about my body.
What do I do about a country where a whole political party has chosen, as their candidate for president, someone who reversed Roe and bragged about it in the same way he brags about committing sexual assault among other crimes?
Make them care. Make my voice heard. Make it so loud they cannot ignore me or my right to bodily autonomy.
Make them remember that I have a 1st, 9th, and 14th Amendment right to a country that declared its independence through the unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
What do I do about a county that does not care about me?
Eleven years ago, Wendy Davis, then a state senator from Texas, stood for 11 hours to protect abortion rights in Texas. She knew it would be a hard right, but she did it because it was the right thing to do. Because we stand up for the things that matter – even if, and especially when, it’s hard.
Arizona’s Attorney General Kris Mayes has said "no woman or doctor will be prosecuted under this draconian law in this state." She went on to add: “Today’s decision to reimpose a law from a time when Arizona wasn’t a state, the Civil War was raging, and women couldn’t even vote will go down in history as a stain on our state.”
She was elected in 2022.
That’s an elected official that is working to save lives with her statement.
It can be challenged at a county level. A decision that will be made county-to-county by elected officials.
A ballot initiative to enshrine the right to abortion in the state’s Constitution has garnered enough signatures and may be on the ballot this November.
While I took last week off from the news, Florida passed a 6-week abortion ban. On that same day, the Florida Supreme Court also allowed a proposed amendment to enshrine the right to abortion in the state’s Constitution to appear on the ballot this November.
What do I do about a county that does not care about me?
I vote. In every single election.
And that’s it. That’s the special episode.